He's on the Phone
by morgan1
Summary: Wesley gets a phone call from Cordelia (this is a mushy, romantic fic. Don't say I didn't warn you.)


Title: He's On The Phone

Author: Mary-Jane Roebuck 

Rating: PG-13 (PG if you're British)

Spoilers: For all of Buffy S3 & 4, Angel S1. This story is set a few weeks after 'To Shanshu in LA' 

Summary: Wesley gets a phone call from Cordelia. 

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, The WB and 20th Century Fox. The interpretation of the characters is entirely my own.

Distribution: If you want it, you're welcome. Just ask first so I know where it's going. 

Feedback: To mjroebuck@excite.com. I am a feedback junkie. Please feed my habit. 

Anti-Wesley flames will be ignored, so don't bother. If you don't like the idea of Cordy and Wesley as a couple, please don't read this fic. 

Note: This fic was inspired by the Saint Etienne song 'He's on the Phone'. You can find the lyrics at: [http://saint.etienne.net/ec/Hes_On_The_Phone.song.html][1] if you're interested. 

*************************************************

Wesley twisted the telephone cord around his fingers. He'd never called Cordelia so late at night before, but .. this was urgent. He hoped she wouldn't mind the interruption to her beauty sleep. 

It took him several minutes of pacing around the room - and quite a few more tricks with the cord - before he actually worked up the nerve to dial the number. His hand hovered over the number pad .. and then the phone rang. 

A familiar voice floated down the line. 

"Wesley?" 

"Cordelia!" He was momentarily thrown and had to sit down. Surely this was some kind of ... sign. "I was just about to..."

"I just thought that we should .. talk." Wesley had never heard Cordelia sound so unsure of herself. He took a deep breath. This wasn't good. 

"That sounds somewhat .. ominous." 

There was a pause and for a moment he thought he'd scared her away. 

"Ominous?", she laughed. "Nope, not ominous. I just wanted a chat." 

"A CHAT?" Wesley could barely hide his amazement. Cordelia only ever telephoned him when it was strictly necessary for work purposes." 

"Y'know. We're friends. And friends ring each other up to .. chat." 

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about? I mean, work. Anything. Work." 

Even without seeing her, Wesley could tell Cordelia was frowning. This was tremendous. The evening just got better and better. He'd put his oversized foot in his mouth (which came complete with excessively stiff upper lip) yet again. He realised that he'd have to salvage the situation. 

"Cordelia, I'm sorry, it's just that..."

"That you don't know how to do this because you don't have any friends and you never have." She sounded almost hurt. "That after all we've been through together you won't even tell me where you live. That you care about .. us .. but you don't know how to express your feelings so you just pretend you're having an allergic reaction whenever you get emotional." 

For a moment, Wesley felt as though his skin had become transparent. Cordelia knew him better than he thought. He felt as though he was about to cry, but fought his feelings out of sheer habit. Eventually, words formed in his throat. 

"Cordelia .. It's not that I don't trust you. You must never think that, do you understand?" 

"Okay. Whatever." 

She was closing him off. He could hear it. Well, that was just ... fine. 

Rejection was normal. He could cope with rejection. It was everything else that got him confused. He knew how this conversation would end, but he blundered on, stumbling over his words as per usual. 

"No, not whatever. I trust you and Angel more than anyone I've ever known. But .. all of this is new to me." 

"All of what?" 

"Everything. Living in a foreign city. Having to make a living outside the Council, no longer adopting their way of thinking at every turn. Having .. people who care about me. I've never had that before and I don't ... It's just strange. Hard to get used to." 

"How is it strange?" Cordelia's tone was softer, more gentle.

"It's complicated." 

"Isn't everything?"

"It has to do with my family. My God, I hate this American thing that you have to blame everything on your childhood, but.."

"But?"

"Ever since I can remember, I've been trying to please my father. But whatever I did, it was never enough. I did well at school. I got into Cambridge without, I might add, any help from the Council or my family. When the time came I completed my training as a Watcher. And sometimes I wondered why I even bothered. Why did I persist for so long? My ambitions never did me any good. Nothing I did made my father love or respect me because I don't believe that he loved me to begin with. The whole thing - my whole life - has been a total waste of time, energy, everything."

He hadn't intended to reveal so much and it took him a moment to recover. And he wasn't sure how Cordelia would react. 

The silence at the other end of the line told him all he needed to know. He hung up the phone. A glass of water, that was what he needed. It would calm him down, help to clear his head. 

The phone began to ring. 

His answering machine clicked on. He inward cursed the day he'd purchased the wretched thing, but Angel had insisted it was necessary for work purposes. 

"Wesley? If you're there, pick up the phone." 

He went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. He splashed some water onto his face. It didn't help. 

"Wesley, come on. You're scaring me. Please .. don't do this." 

He poured himself a glass of water and sat down on one of the boxes of books that he'd never got round to unpacking. 

"I'm worried about you."

He began to drink the water. 

"Wesley .. please. Please." He could hear Cordelia taking a few deep breaths, as though she was fighting back tears. 

He picked up the phone. 

"Cordelia, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to .."

"Dammit, Wesley. Why do you always have to do that?" Her voice sounded harsh, and he steeled himself for one - or more, many more - of her critical remarks. 

"What did I do?"

"You apologised for something that wasn't your fault. Not everything bad that happens in the world is because of you." 

He tried to lighten the tone of his voice. It would be safer that way. "No, but a lot of it is." 

"Stop it! Stop beating yourself up like that! It's not a whole lot of fun to listen to, you know." 

"I'm sorry, I'll just.."

"No, you won't just do anything. Wesley, listen to me. Whatever your father did to you, it wasn't your fault. Sins of the father and all that. I should know that better than anybody. You're a good, brave person. When you were in Sunnydale, you made a few mistakes. EVERYONE makes mistakes. Specially when they're doing a job they've never done before - I mean, the number of times I've mislaid invoices - AND when no-one even wants them in town. AND one of their slayers is an evil psycho bitch from hell."

"Not everyone has to work in Sunnydale." 

"But you know what I'm saying, right? You're only human. You can't help everyone. Or save everyone. Specially if they don't WANT to be saved." 

"Cordelia, whatever you say, I will always, always blame myself for what went wrong in Sunnydale. Things could have been so different if I hadn't .. failed. I hope you understand the way I feel." 

"I understand that you don't need to feel so darn bad about yourself. You're not the terrible person you think you are. You're kind, and funny, and you come through when it matters. And you've got a lot of .. style." 

Wesley laughed at the memory of Cordelia's defence of his actions prior to the Mayor's ascension. 

"If I recall correctly, you called it .. classiness."

"Precisely! You are classy. For my money, you're the classiest man in LA. Though that isn't hard." 

"You don't have to say all of this, you know." 

Cordelia sighed. "Wesley, you really have no idea how to take a compliment, do you?" 

"Well, I don't have very much .. experience in that department." 

There was another pause and he wondered if Cordelia had hung up. Then her voice came down the line again. It had a tone that he'd never heard before. Quiet, soft - as though she was making a confession. He was so spellbound that he could barely take in the actual words. 

"You know that I used to have a lot of ... feelings for you. And .. I've come to realise that .. I still do." 

"What .. sort of feelings?"

"Romantic feelings."

It took a moment to sink in. He pinched himself twice to make sure he was awake. He had to make sure that she'd said what he thought she'd said. 

"Cordelia, you don't have to say that just to make me feel better about myself."

She laughed. Oh well, she'd been joking. He could live with that. 

"When have you ever known me to say ANYTHING I don't mean?"

"Well .. never." 

"Exactly." 

He took a deep breath. "Cordelia, you and I are very different. Very different people to those we were when we first met. You know that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever met. And the funniest. The one most likely to cheer me up. Sometimes the most shallow, the most tactless and capricious. And sometimes .. all the time .. the kindest. And the most surprising. You constantly amaze me, do you know that? And that's why I.."

"Why you what?"

"I feel the way I do about you... I've never said this about anyone before." 

He paused. This was it. No going back. "I want you. Of course I want you, but mostly I just .. love you. And I hope that's enough because I can't give you anything else. And I never even dared to hope that you would feel the same way about me." 

"I don't know." 

"You don't know if you feel the same way about me? Well, I mean .. that's fine. That's absolutely down to you. I can't make you feel anything you don't feel and of course now our feelings are out in the open things will be much .. easier. No .. unresolved tension." 

Oh well, that was it. He'd have to leave Angel Investigations. And probably Los Angeles too, since he didn't think he'd ever be able to work in the same office as Cordelia again. 

"No, silly. I don't know why it took you so long to tell me."

"Ah. That would be the excruciating fear of rejection." 

"So I'm scary?"

"No .. it's just that I haven't been around women very much .. in fact, hardly at all until I met you. And there hasn't been much .. acceptance in my life. "

"Acceptance?"

"Acceptance as opposed to rejection, social humiliation and ridicule." 

"Wesley, you don't have to worry about that any more. You have people that love you."

"And .. you would be one of those people" 

"Well, I don't think Angel loves you in quite the same way that I do, but .. yeah." 

They both laughed, and Wesley realised that he was experiencing something that he'd never felt before. Not just love - and love from Cordelia, something which he'd thought was right up there with the sky turning green in the list of likely events in his life, but .. a feeling that he was accepted. That there were people who loved him for what he was, not what they wanted him to be. 

For a moment, he just listened to Cordelia breathing. It was the most amazing sound, because the fact that she was alive and she loved him represented a whole world of potential happiness. There were endless possibilities. 

He took a look around his small, dingy flat and realised that he felt more at home in this strange place than he ever had in England. Angel and Cordelia were family, more so than his blood relations had ever been or could ever be. They were first, last, everything. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


WD VERSION: 

I am totally ashamed of myself. This is the first non-porny Wesley fic I have ever written and hence the first which has ever been un-explicit enough to post here. In my defence, it started out as a phone-sex smut-fest, but then metamorphosed into something different. Never mind. 

Anyway, here goes:

Title: He's On The Phone

Genre: Romance. Please don't read if you don't like the idea of Cordy & Wesley as a couple. 

Author: Mary-Jane Roebuck (err, that would be me) 

Rating: PG-13 (PG if you're British)

Spoilers: For all of Buffy S3 & 4, Angel S1. This story is set a few weeks after 'To Shanshu in LA' 

Characters: Wesley and Cordelia

Summary: Wesley gets a phone call from Cordelia. They talk about everything, but mostly about his time in Sunnydale and their life working for Angel Investigations. (I don't usually write such dialogue-heavy fic, so apologies if it's hard to follow.) 

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, The WB and 20th Century Fox. The interpretation of the characters is entirely my own.

Distribution: If you want it, you're welcome. Just ask first so I know where it's going. 

I've posted this to the WatcherGirls, RogueDemonHunter, WesFemmes, WesleyandCordy and cordy_wesley groups. I will possibly post it at the Angels' Soul board too. 

Feedback: To [mjroebuck@excite.com][2]

I am a feedback junkie. Please feed my habit. Anti-Wesley flames will be ignored, so don't bother. 

  
  


Note: This fic was inspired by (and takes its title from) the Saint Etienne song 'He's On The Phone'. You can find the lyrics[url=saint.etienne.net/ec/Hes_On_The_Phone.song.html]here[/url] if you're interested. 

******************************

Wesley twisted the telephone cord around his fingers. He'd never called Cordelia so late at night before, but .. this was urgent. He hoped she wouldn't mind the interruption to her beauty sleep. 

It took him several minutes of pacing around the room - and quite a few more tricks with the cord - before he actually worked up the nerve to dial the number. His hand hovered over the number pad .. and then the phone rang. 

A familiar voice floated down the line. 

"Wesley?" 

"Cordelia!" He was momentarily thrown and had to sit down. Surely this was some kind of ... sign. "I was just about to..."

"I just thought that we should .. talk." Wesley had never heard Cordelia sound so unsure of herself. He took a deep breath. This wasn't good. 

"That sounds somewhat .. ominous." 

There was a pause and for a moment he thought he'd scared her away. 

"Ominous?", she laughed. "Nope, not ominous. I just wanted a chat." 

"A CHAT?" Wesley could barely hide his amazement. Cordelia only ever telephoned him when it was strictly necessary for work purposes." 

"Y'know. We're friends. And friends ring each other up to .. chat." 

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about? I mean, work. Anything. Work." 

Even without seeing her, Wesley could tell Cordelia was frowning. This was tremendous. The evening just got better and better. He'd put his oversized foot in his mouth (which came complete with excessively stiff upper lip) yet again. He realised that he'd have to salvage the situation. 

"Cordelia, I'm sorry, it's just that..."

"That you don't know how to do this because you don't have any friends and you never have." She sounded almost hurt. "That after all we've been through together you won't even tell me where you live. That you care about .. us .. but you don't know how to express your feelings so you just pretend you're having an allergic reaction whenever you get emotional." 

For a moment, Wesley felt as though his skin had become transparent. Cordelia knew him better than he thought. He felt as though he was about to cry, but fought his feelings out of sheer habit. Eventually, words formed in his throat. 

"Cordelia .. It's not that I don't trust you. You must never think that, do you understand?" 

"Okay. Whatever." 

She was closing him off. He could hear it. Well, that was just ... fine. 

Rejection was normal. He could cope with rejection. It was everything else that got him confused. He knew how this conversation would end, but he blundered on, stumbling over his words as per usual. 

"No, not whatever. I trust you and Angel more than anyone I've ever known. But .. all of this is new to me." 

"All of what?" 

"Everything. Living in a foreign city. Having to make a living outside the Council, no longer adopting their way of thinking at every turn. Having .. people who care about me. I've never had that before and I don't ... It's just strange. Hard to get used to." 

"How is it strange?" Cordelia's tone was softer, more gentle.

"It's complicated." 

"Isn't everything?"

"It has to do with my family. My God, I hate this American thing that you have to blame everything on your childhood, but.."

"But?"

"Ever since I can remember, I've been trying to please my father. But whatever I did, it was never enough. I did well at school. I got into Cambridge without, I might add, any help from the Council or my family. When the time came I completed my training as a Watcher. And sometimes I wondered why I even bothered. Why did I persist for so long? My ambitions never did me any good. Nothing I did made my father love or respect me because I don't believe that he loved me to begin with. The whole thing - my whole life - has been a total waste of time, energy, everything."

He hadn't intended to reveal so much and it took him a moment to recover. And he wasn't sure how Cordelia would react. 

The silence at the other end of the line told him all he needed to know. He hung up the phone. A glass of water, that was what he needed. It would calm him down, help to clear his head. 

The phone began to ring. 

His answering machine clicked on. He inward cursed the day he'd purchased the wretched thing, but Angel had insisted it was necessary for work purposes. 

"Wesley? If you're there, pick up the phone." 

He went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. He splashed some water onto his face. It didn't help. 

"Wesley, come on. You're scaring me. Please .. don't do this." 

He poured himself a glass of water and sat down on one of the boxes of books that he'd never got round to unpacking. 

"I'm worried about you."

He began to drink the water. 

"Wesley .. please. Please." He could hear Cordelia taking a few deep breaths, as though she was fighting back tears. 

He picked up the phone. 

"Cordelia, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to .."

"Dammit, Wesley. Why do you always have to do that?" Her voice sounded harsh, and he steeled himself for one - or more, many more - of her critical remarks. 

"What did I do?"

"You apologised for something that wasn't your fault. Not everything bad that happens in the world is because of you." 

He tried to lighten the tone of his voice. It would be safer that way. "No, but a lot of it is." 

"Stop it! Stop beating yourself up like that! It's not a whole lot of fun to listen to, you know." 

"I'm sorry, I'll just.."

"No, you won't just do anything. Wesley, listen to me. Whatever your father did to you, it wasn't your fault. Sins of the father and all that. I should know that better than anybody. You're a good, brave person. When you were in Sunnydale, you made a few mistakes. EVERYONE makes mistakes. Specially when they're doing a job they've never done before - I mean, the number of times I've mislaid invoices - AND when no-one even wants them in town. AND one of their slayers is an evil psycho bitch from hell."

"Not everyone has to work in Sunnydale." 

"But you know what I'm saying, right? You're only human. You can't help everyone. Or save everyone. Specially if they don't WANT to be saved." 

"Cordelia, whatever you say, I will always, always blame myself for what went wrong in Sunnydale. Things could have been so different if I hadn't .. failed. I hope you understand the way I feel." 

"I understand that you don't need to feel so darn bad about yourself. You're not the terrible person you think you are. You're kind, and funny, and you come through when it matters. And you've got a lot of .. style." 

Wesley laughed at the memory of Cordelia's defence of his actions prior to the Mayor's ascension. 

"If I recall correctly, you called it .. classiness."

"Precisely! You are classy. For my money, you're the classiest man in LA. Though that isn't hard." 

"You don't have to say all of this, you know." 

Cordelia sighed. "Wesley, you really have no idea how to take a compliment, do you?" 

"Well, I don't have very much .. experience in that department." 

There was another pause and he wondered if Cordelia had hung up. Then her voice came down the line again. It had a tone that he'd never heard before. Quiet, soft - as though she was making a confession. He was so spellbound that he could barely take in the actual words. 

"You know that I used to have a lot of ... feelings for you. And .. I've come to realise that .. I still do." 

"What .. sort of feelings?"

"Romantic feelings."

It took a moment to sink in. He pinched himself twice to make sure he was awake. He had to make sure that she'd said what he thought she'd said. 

"Cordelia, you don't have to say that just to make me feel better about myself."

She laughed. Oh well, she'd been joking. He could live with that. 

"When have you ever known me to say ANYTHING I don't mean?"

"Well .. never." 

"Exactly." 

He took a deep breath. "Cordelia, you and I are very different. Very different people to those we were when we first met. You know that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever met. And the funniest. The one most likely to cheer me up. Sometimes the most shallow, the most tactless and capricious. And sometimes .. all the time .. the kindest. And the most surprising. You constantly amaze me, do you know that? And that's why I.."

"Why you what?"

"I feel the way I do about you... I've never said this about anyone before." 

He paused. This was it. No going back. "I want you. Of course I want you, but mostly I just .. love you. And I hope that's enough because I can't give you anything else. And I never even dared to hope that you would feel the same way about me." 

"I don't know." 

"You don't know if you feel the same way about me? Well, I mean .. that's fine. That's absolutely down to you. I can't make you feel anything you don't feel and of course now our feelings are out in the open things will be much .. easier. No .. unresolved tension." 

Oh well, that was it. He'd have to leave Angel Investigations. And probably Los Angeles too, since he didn't think he'd ever be able to work in the same office as Cordelia again. 

"No, silly. I don't know why it took you so long to tell me."

"Ah. That would be the excruciating fear of rejection." 

"So I'm scary?"

"No .. it's just that I haven't been around women very much .. in fact, hardly at all until I met you. And there hasn't been much .. acceptance in my life. "

"Acceptance?"

"Acceptance as opposed to rejection, social humiliation and ridicule." 

"Wesley, you don't have to worry about that any more. You have people that love you."

"And .. you would be one of those people" 

"Well, I don't think Angel loves you in quite the same way that I do, but .. yeah." 

They both laughed, and Wesley realised that he was experiencing something that he'd never felt before. Not just love - and love from Cordelia, something which he'd thought was right up there with the sky turning green in the list of likely events in his life, but .. a feeling that he was accepted. That there were people who loved him for what he was, not what they wanted him to be. 

For a moment, he just listened to Cordelia breathing. It was the most amazing sound, because the fact that she was alive and she loved him represented a whole world of potential happiness. There were endless possibilities. 

He took a look around his small, dingy flat and realised that he felt more at home in this strange place than he ever had in England. Angel and Cordelia were family, more so than his blood relations had ever been or could ever be. They were first, last, everything. 

  
  


~ The End ~ 

   [1]: http://saint.etienne.net/ec/Hes_On_The_Phone.song.html
   [2]: mailto:mjroebuck@excite.com



End file.
